StreamBlasters: fifteen months of films in six languages

What StreamBlasters is

On 20 March 2023 the home page of StreamBlasters opened with a black bar and a short menu: Home, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, English. Below it sat a carousel of featured titles and a long row marked Latest, and every card in that row carried two small facts under the poster, the language and the date. Agilan, Tamil. Thuramukham, Malayalam. Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar, Hindi. Hunt, Tamil. For a visitor in Chennai, Kochi or Bengaluru, those two facts were the whole point: which language, and how recent.

This guide keeps both facts and turns them into a structure. It gathers 150 films released between 1 January 2022 and 20 March 2023, the day of that archived page, in the same six languages as the menu. For each language it keeps the films most voted on TMDB, the open film database, in two windows: January to August 2022, and September 2022 to March 2023. That makes twelve shelves of twelve or thirteen films each, shown newest first, as the Latest row was.

The result is a time capsule of a remarkable stretch for Indian cinema. It covers the months when RRR went from a Telugu blockbuster to a worldwide talking point, when K.G.F: Chapter 2 and Kantara carried Kannada films to audiences across the country, when Vikram and Ponniyin Selvan: Part I filled Tamil cinemas, and when Malayalam cinema produced a run of sharp, small films from Hridayam to Romancham. Beside them sit the Hindi films of the period, from Gangubai Kathiawadi to Pathaan, and the English releases that shared the same screens, from The Batman to Avatar: The Way of Water.

Every poster carries a red label with its language and release date, written the way the StreamBlasters cards wrote it, such as "Telugu · Mar. 24, 2022". Every film has an English synopsis, its cast and director, and a Watch now button that opens it on JustWatch, where the legal services that offer it in your country are listed.

New here? Read Start with StreamBlasters first; every part of the site is explained in How to use StreamBlasters.

The six languages

The six languages each have their own family page, with both windows together: Tamil 26 films, Telugu 26, Hindi 26, Malayalam 24, Kannada 24 and English 24. The Tamil, Telugu and Hindi shelves hold thirteen films per window, the other three twelve, so that the guide comes to exactly 150.

The four South Indian languages together hold 100 films. Their combined TMDB vote count is 5,346, and RRR alone accounts for 1,730 of those votes, about a third. The Hindi shelves add 2,847 votes. The English shelves are in another league: 177,814 votes for 24 films, because Hollywood releases are voted on by a worldwide audience. That gap is the reason the guide ranks each language only against itself.

A seventh list collects the films rated 7.5 or more on TMDB by twenty voters or more: 17 films, from the Tamil farming drama Kadaisi Vivasayi at 8.6 to Top Gun: Maverick at 8.2 and Drishyam 2 at 8.0.

How the windows work

The rule of the guide is simple. A film enters a shelf when its original language is one of the six and its release date, as TMDB records it, falls inside the window. The first window runs from 1 January to 31 August 2022, eight months. The second runs from 1 September 2022 to 20 March 2023, six and a half months that include the busy festival season of Diwali, Christmas, Pongal and Sankranti.

Inside each window the guide picks the films with the most TMDB votes, because the vote count is the closest open measure of how many people sought a film out and rated it. Inside each shelf the films are sorted by release date, newest first, so the shelf reads like the Latest row of a streaming home page. The first Tamil shelf, for instance, opens with Cobra on 31 August 2022 and closes with Mahaan on 10 February 2022.

Two small filters shaped the selection. Documentaries, animated films and television films were left aside, because the StreamBlasters menu was a menu of feature films. And each film needed a poster and an English synopsis on TMDB, so that every page of the guide can tell its story.

Vote counts vary enormously between languages, and that is visible in every shelf. The most voted Kannada film of the second window, Kantara, has 165 votes; the twelfth, the romantic comedy Dil Pasand, has one. The most voted English film of the same window has 14,801. Comparing within a language keeps the shelves fair: the Kannada window shows the Kannada films that audiences rated most, and the English window does the same for Hollywood.

The windows also show how releases cluster. The 150 films split evenly, 75 in each window, so the shorter second window is the denser one, and it holds the single busiest month of the guide, December 2022, with 18 releases.

The short version of these rules is in How the windows work, and the four South Indian languages have their own overview in The South Indian shelves.

Tamil: January to August 2022

The first Tamil window holds thirteen films and 748 votes, and it is dominated by one release. Vikram, directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj and released on 2 June 2022, has 193 votes, a quarter of the shelf. Kamal Haasan leads it as a retired agent drawn back into a war against drug lords, with Fahadh Faasil as the officer on the case and Vijay Sethupathi as the villain, and its 174 minutes tie it into the world of the director's earlier film Kaithi.

Two big star films sit in the same window. Beast, released on 12 April 2022, puts Vijay in a Chennai shopping mall taken over by hijackers; it has 93 votes and a modest 5.1 rating. Valimai, released on 24 February, sends Ajith Kumar after a gang of bikers, at 179 minutes. Vikram the actor appears twice: as a gangster father in Karthik Subbaraj's Mahaan, made with his son Dhruv Vikram, and as a mathematician with many disguises in Cobra, the longest film of the shelf at 183 minutes.

The quieter films carry the best ratings. Kadaisi Vivasayi, released on 11 February, follows Maayandi, the last farmer of a village that has given up farming, and is rated 8.6, the highest rating of any film in the guide with twenty votes or more. Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, directed by and starring R. Madhavan, tells the life of the rocket scientist Nambi Narayanan and is rated 7.7. Gargi, with Sai Pallavi as a schoolteacher who defends her accused father, is rated 7.4.

The lighter end of the shelf has Thiruchitrambalam, a gentle Dhanush romance rated 7.4, the campus comedy Don with Sivakarthikeyan, the Suriya family drama Etharkkum Thunindhavan, the Dulquer Salmaan romance Hey! Sinamika and the revenge drama Saani Kaayidham with Keerthy Suresh. The average rating of the shelf is 6.58.

The whole window is on Tamil: January to August 2022, and both Tamil windows together on Tamil; the short guide is Tamil.

Tamil: September 2022 to March 2023

The second Tamil window opens with a historical epic. Ponniyin Selvan: Part I, released on 30 September 2022, is Mani Ratnam's adaptation of Kalki Krishnamurthy's novel of the Chola kingdom, with Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Karthi and Ravi Mohan. It is the most voted film of the shelf with 102 votes, and it opened on the same day as Kantara, which made that weekend one of the biggest of the period for South Indian cinema.

The festival season brought the star films. Thunivu, with Ajith Kumar as the leader of a bank heist, opened on 10 January 2023, and Varisu, with Vijay as the youngest son of a business family, opened a day later, on 11 January: the two biggest Tamil stars of the decade clashing on the Pongal weekend. Diwali had already brought Sardar, with Karthi as a policeman and a spy, and Prince, with Sivakarthikeyan, both on 21 October 2022.

The surprise of the window is Love Today, released on 4 November 2022. Its director, Pradeep Ranganathan, also plays its lead, a young man whose girlfriend's father asks the couple to swap phones for a day. It has 65 votes and a 6.9 rating, more votes than either Diwali film. Naai Sekar Returns, the comeback of the comedian Vadivelu, follows on 9 December, and Dada, a young-father drama, on 10 February 2023, rated 7.2, level with Ponniyin Selvan at the top of the shelf.

The shelf closes with Vaathi, Dhanush as a teacher in a private college, on 16 February 2023, and reaches back through DSP and Gatta Kusthi, both released on 2 December, to Naane Varuvean and Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu in September. Dhanush appears in three of the 26 Tamil films, and so do Vijay Sethupathi and Vikram.

See the full shelf on Tamil: September 2022 to March 2023.

Telugu: January to August 2022

The first Telugu window belongs to RRR. S. S. Rajamouli's film, released on 24 March 2022, imagines a friendship between two revolutionaries of the 1920s, played by N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan, and runs 187 minutes. With 1,730 votes it is the most voted Indian film of the whole guide, more than the other twelve films of its shelf together, and its song Naatu Naatu went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song in March 2023, days before the StreamBlasters page was archived.

The best rated film of the shelf is Sita Ramam, released on 5 August 2022 and rated 7.8 from 125 votes. Hanu Raghavapudi's period romance follows a Pakistani student in London who must deliver a letter from 1965, and it stars Dulquer Salmaan and Mrunal Thakur. Major, released on 3 June, tells the life of the officer Sandeep Unnikrishnan, with Adivi Sesh, and Ante... Sundaraniki!, a comedy of two families from different faiths with Nani and Nazriya Nazim, follows a week later.

August 2022 was a strong month for Telugu releases: Sita Ramam and the fantasy Bimbisara on 5 August, the mystery adventure Karthikeya 2 on 13 August, and the boxing film Liger with Vijay Deverakonda on 25 August. Earlier in the year came the Prabhas romance Radhe Shyam, the Mahesh Babu action film Sarkaru Vaari Paata, the Pawan Kalyan drama Bheemla Nayak and the Chiranjeevi film Acharya, made with his son Ram Charan.

The window opens with Bangarraju, a Sankranti fantasy comedy with Nagarjuna Akkineni and his son Naga Chaitanya, released on 14 January 2022. Several of these star vehicles carry low ratings: Acharya and the comedy sequel F3 are both rated 3.9. The average rating of the shelf is 5.75, the lowest of the six first windows.

The whole window is on Telugu: January to August 2022, and both Telugu windows together on Telugu; the short guide is Telugu.

Telugu: September 2022 to March 2023

The second Telugu window is a quieter shelf in votes, 309 in all, with HIT: The 2nd Case at the top on 56. Sailesh Kolanu's crime thriller, released on 1 December 2022, puts Adivi Sesh on the trail of a killer in Visakhapatnam, and it is rated 6.9.

Sankranti 2023 brought two veterans back. Veera Simha Reddy, with Nandamuri Balakrishna as a faction leader, opened on 12 January, and Waltair Veerayya, with Chiranjeevi as a fisherman, on 13 January. Chiranjeevi is in three Telugu films of the guide, with Acharya and GodFather, his October 2022 remake of a Malayalam political drama, released on the same day as Nagarjuna's action film The Ghost.

The most interesting film of the window is the last one. Balagam, released on 3 March 2023, is a village drama about a family that gathers after the death of its grandfather, made by the comedian Venu Yeldandi, and it is rated 7.3, the best rating of the shelf. Masooda, a horror drama, and Yashoda, a surrogacy thriller with Samantha Ruth Prabhu, came in November.

The rest of the shelf is made of comedies and romances: Dhamaka and 18 Pages, both released on 23 December, Krishna Vrinda Vihari, Saakini Daakini and Ranga Ranga Vaibhavanga in September 2022. The average rating of the window is 5.47, the lowest of the twelve shelves.

See the full shelf on Telugu: September 2022 to March 2023.

Malayalam: January to August 2022

The first Malayalam window holds twelve films and 485 votes, and it opens with a love story. Hridayam, released on 21 January 2022, follows Arun and Darshana from their first year at an engineering college through the years that follow, with Pranav Mohanlal, Darshana Rajendran and Kalyani Priyadarshan; its fifteen songs were played everywhere in Kerala that year. On the same day came Bhoothakaalam, a slow horror drama of a mother and son with Revathi and Shane Nigam, rated 7.0.

The most voted film of the shelf is Jana Gana Mana, released on 28 April, a courtroom and political thriller with Prithviraj Sukumaran and Suraj Venjaramoodu, rated 7.3 from 79 votes. Prithviraj is in three Malayalam films of the guide: Jana Gana Mana, the family comedy Bro Daddy, which he also directed with Mohanlal as his father, and the December comedy Gold.

The rest of the window shows the range of Malayalam cinema in 2022. Bheeshma Parvam puts Mammootty at the head of a Kochi crime family. Salute is a police drama with Dulquer Salmaan. 12th Man is a Jeethu Joseph whodunit set at a bachelor party, with Mohanlal. Ela Veezha Poonchira is a tight thriller set at a police wireless station on a hilltop, only 104 minutes long. Malayankunju traps Fahadh Faasil under a landslide.

August closes the window with two comedies a day apart: Nna Thaan Case Kodu, released on 11 August, in which a former thief takes a state minister to court over a road accident, rated 7.3, and Thallumaala, released on 12 August, a brawl-filled comedy with Tovino Thomas, the most voted film of the month in Malayalam with 50 votes. Super Sharanya, a campus comedy with Anaswara Rajan, opened the year on 7 January.

The whole window is on Malayalam: January to August 2022, and both Malayalam windows together on Malayalam; the short guide is Malayalam.

Malayalam: September 2022 to March 2023

The second Malayalam window is the best rated of the four South Indian shelves of that period, with an average of 6.69: five of its twelve films are rated 7.0 or more. The best is Mukundan Unni Associates™, released on 11 November 2022, a black comedy about a ruthless lawyer with Vineeth Sreenivasan, rated 7.7. Its title carries a trademark sign, which is why it appears as plain text in some lists of this guide.

The most voted film is Romancham, released on 3 February 2023: seven bachelors in a rented house outside Bengaluru play with an Ouija board and invite a spirit in. It has 61 votes and a 7.4 rating, and it was one of the biggest Malayalam hits of early 2023. On the same day came Iratta, a police drama in which Joju George plays twin brothers, rated 6.9.

Mammootty has two films in this window. Rorschach, released on 7 October 2022, is a dark revenge thriller, and Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, released on 19 January 2023 and directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, tells of a man who wakes in a Tamil village convinced he belongs there. With Bheeshma Parvam in the first window, Mammootty is in three Malayalam films of the guide.

The comedy Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, released on 28 October, follows a young wife who learns martial arts to stand up to her husband, with Darshana Rajendran and Basil Joseph. Basil Joseph is in three Malayalam films: this one, Nna Thaan Case Kodu and Palthu Janwar. The window also holds Saudi Vellakka, Kooman, Kumari, Thankam and Gold, Alphonse Puthren's comedy, which is rated 4.1, the lowest of the shelf.

See the full shelf on Malayalam: September 2022 to March 2023.

Hindi: January to August 2022

The first Hindi window holds thirteen films and 1,367 votes. Its most voted film is Attack, released on 1 April 2022, a science-fiction action film in which John Abraham plays a soldier given a computer implant, with 226 votes. Close behind is Gangubai Kathiawadi, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's portrait of a woman who rose to power in Mumbai's Kamathipura, released on 24 February with Alia Bhatt in the lead; it has 203 votes and a 7.5 rating, the best of the shelf.

Alia Bhatt has three Hindi films in the guide: Gangubai Kathiawadi, the black comedy Darlings, released straight to streaming on 5 August, and the fantasy Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva in September. John Abraham also has three, with Attack, Ek Villain Returns and Pathaan, and so do Ajay Devgn and Rakul Preet Singh, who appear together in Runway 34, a cockpit drama released on 29 April with Amitabh Bachchan as the investigator.

The window holds two films that drew very different kinds of attention. The Kashmir Files, released on 11 March, recounts the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990 and became one of the most discussed films of the year. Laal Singh Chaddha, released on 11 August, is Aamir Khan's adaptation of Forrest Gump, with Kareena Kapoor Khan; it has 99 votes and a 6.2 rating.

The rest of the shelf mixes comedy and drama: Badhaai Do, a marriage of convenience with Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar; Looop Lapeta, a remake of Run Lola Run with Taapsee Pannu; A Thursday, a hostage thriller with Yami Gautam Dhar; Jersey, a cricket drama with Shahid Kapoor, remade from a Telugu film; Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, a horror comedy with Kartik Aaryan; and JugJugg Jeeyo, a family comedy with Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani.

The whole window is on Hindi: January to August 2022, and both Hindi windows together on Hindi; the short guide is Hindi and English.

Hindi: September 2022 to March 2023

The second Hindi window is the most voted Indian shelf of the guide after the first Telugu window: 1,480 votes for thirteen films. Its leader is Pathaan, released on 25 January 2023, Shah Rukh Khan's return to the screen after a four-year break, as a spy brought back for one more mission, with Deepika Padukone and John Abraham; it has 279 votes. The film that opened the StreamBlasters home page row for Hindi, Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar, a romantic comedy with Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor released on 8 March 2023, has 226.

The best rated film of the window, and the best rated Hindi film of the guide, is Drishyam 2, released on 18 November 2022. Ajay Devgn returns as Vijay Salgaonkar, the cable operator who hid a crime to protect his family, seven years later; it is rated 8.0 from 122 votes. Monica, O My Darling, a crime comedy with Rajkummar Rao, released the week before, is rated 7.1.

The window opens with the fantasy Brahmāstra Part One: Shiva, released on 8 September, with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, 211 votes. September also brought Chup, a thriller about a killer who targets film critics, with Dulquer Salmaan, and Vikram Vedha, the Hindi remake of the Tamil hit, with Saif Ali Khan and Hrithik Roshan. Bhediya, a werewolf comedy with Varun Dhawan, followed in November.

Two films opened on 2 December: An Action Hero, with Ayushmann Khurrana as a film star on the run, and Freddy, a dark romance with Kartik Aaryan. Doctor G gave Ayushmann Khurrana a second film in the window, as a male student of gynaecology. Mission Majnu, a spy drama with Sidharth Malhotra, and Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway, with Rani Mukerji as a mother fighting the Norwegian child services, complete the shelf.

See the full shelf on Hindi: September 2022 to March 2023.

Kannada: January to August 2022

The first Kannada window holds the film that changed how the rest of India saw Kannada cinema. K.G.F: Chapter 2, released on 14 April 2022, continues Prashanth Neel's saga of Rocky, played by Yash, who rules the Kolar Gold Fields, with Sanjay Dutt as his enemy Adheera and Raveena Tandon as the prime minister. It has 235 votes, more than half of the shelf's 408, and a 7.4 rating.

The second most voted is 777 Charlie, released on 10 June, with 81 votes and a 7.6 rating, the best of the shelf among films with twenty votes or more. Rakshit Shetty plays Dharma, a lonely factory worker whose life changes when a stray Labrador puppy named Charlie moves in, and the film follows the two on a road trip to the Himalayas. Third is Vikrant Rona, released on 28 July, a 3D mystery thriller with Kichcha Sudeepa as a police inspector in a haunted village.

James, released on 17 March 2022, has a special place in the shelf: it was the last film of Puneeth Rajkumar, the Kannada star who died in October 2021, and it reached cinemas on what would have been his 47th birthday. His brother Shiva Rajkumar appears in it, and Shiva Rajkumar is in three Kannada films of the guide, with Bairagee and Vedha.

The rest of the window shows how thin the TMDB record is for smaller Kannada films. Avatara Purusha: Part 1, a horror fantasy, has 22 votes, and the romance Love Mocktail 2 has seven. Ravi Bopanna, Old Monk, Petromax, Dear Vikram and Fourwalls have two or three votes each, so their ratings, from 3.5 to 8.0, reflect a handful of viewers. Darling Krishna, who directed and stars in Love Mocktail 2, is in four Kannada films of the guide, the most of any actor in a single language.

The whole window is on Kannada: January to August 2022, and both Kannada windows together on Kannada; the short guide is Kannada.

Kannada: September 2022 to March 2023

The second Kannada window has one giant and eleven small films. The giant is Kantara, written and directed by Rishab Shetty, who also plays its lead, Shiva, a young man of a coastal Karnataka village tied to the ritual of Bhoota Kola and a land dispute with a feudal lord. Released on 30 September 2022 in Kannada, it reached the other Indian languages two weeks later and became one of the most talked-about films of the year. It has 165 votes, more than three quarters of the shelf's 215, and a 7.1 rating.

The rest of the window is a portrait of an ordinary season of Kannada releases. Kabzaa, a period gangster film with Upendra released on 17 March 2023, three days before the StreamBlasters page was archived, has 16 votes. Kranti, an action film with Darshan, opened on Republic Day, 26 January 2023. Vedha, with Shiva Rajkumar, came on 23 December 2022.

The smaller films include 19.20.21, a crime drama about a young man arrested in the decisive years of his twenties, rated 9.0 from three votes; Head Bush: Vol 1, a gangster film with Dhananjay set in the Bengaluru of the 1970s; Dr. 56, a science-fiction thriller with Priyamani; Hondisi Bareyiri, a drama of college friends who meet again years later; and Darling Krishna's three films of the window, Lucky Man, Dil Pasand and Love Birds.

The average rating of the shelf is 5.66, and with so few votes behind most of these films, the shelf is best read as a list of what was released rather than a ranking of quality. Kantara alone carries a rating built from more than a hundred voters.

See the full shelf on Kannada: September 2022 to March 2023.

English: January to August 2022

The English shelves follow the Hollywood films that played alongside Indian releases in the same months. The first window holds twelve films and 101,451 votes, and every one of them has more than 5,000. The most voted is The Batman, released on 1 March 2022, Matt Reeves's detective story with Robert Pattinson, 12,736 votes and a 7.7 rating; at 177 minutes it is also the longest film of the shelf.

The best rated is Top Gun: Maverick, released on 21 May, rated 8.2 from 11,761 votes, the highest rating of the whole English set. Tom Cruise returns as Pete Mitchell, now training young pilots for a near-impossible mission. Everything Everywhere All at Once, released on 24 March, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture eight days before the archived StreamBlasters page, is rated 7.7 from 8,559 votes.

The superhero films of the window are Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in May and Thor: Love and Thunder in July. The rest of the shelf is a broad mix: Uncharted with Tom Holland, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the Viking revenge film The Northman, Jurassic World Dominion, the horror film The Black Phone, the action comedy Bullet Train with Brad Pitt, and Prey, a Predator film set among the Comanche in 1719, released straight to streaming on 5 August and rated 7.6.

The average rating of the shelf is 7.29, the highest of the twelve shelves, and its shortest film, Prey, runs 100 minutes, the shortest of the guide.

The whole window is on English: January to August 2022, and both English windows together on English; the short guide is Hindi and English.

English: September 2022 to March 2023

The second English window holds twelve films and 76,363 votes. The most voted is Avatar: The Way of Water, released on 14 December 2022, James Cameron's return to Pandora, with 14,801 votes, the most of any film in the guide. At 192 minutes it is also the longest film of the guide, five minutes longer than RRR.

December 2022 was a month of contrasts in this shelf. Beside Avatar came The Whale, Darren Aronofsky's chamber drama with Brendan Fraser, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for it in March 2023; Babylon, Damien Chazelle's three-hour fresco of early Hollywood; M3GAN, a horror film about a lifelike doll; and A Man Called Otto, a remake of the Swedish film with Tom Hanks. The Whale and A Man Called Otto are both rated 7.7, the best of the window.

November brought The Menu, a satire of fine dining with Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery with Daniel Craig, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. October brought Black Adam with Dwayne Johnson, and September the horror film Smile.

The window closes with two superhero sequels of early 2023: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on 15 February and Shazam! Fury of the Gods on 15 March, five days before the archived page, where it appeared in the Latest row as a Tamil-dubbed release. The average rating of the shelf is 7.05.

See the full shelf on English: September 2022 to March 2023.

Pan-India films

The fifteen months of the guide are the months when the phrase "pan-India film" became ordinary. A pan-India film is made in one language and released, usually on the same day, in dubbed versions in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, so that a single film reaches the whole country at once. The StreamBlasters menu, with its six language tabs, reflects that new map, and the guide shelves each film under its original language, the language it was shot in.

RRR is the clearest case. Shot in Telugu, it opened on 24 March 2022 in five Indian languages and went on to a long run on streaming services abroad, which explains its 1,730 TMDB votes, many times more than any other South Indian film of the guide. K.G.F: Chapter 2 did the same for Kannada three weeks later, and Vikram, Ponniyin Selvan: Part I and Kantara followed in Tamil and Kannada.

The traffic also ran the other way. Jersey is a Hindi remake of a Telugu film of 2019, Vikram Vedha a Hindi remake of a Tamil film of 2017, and GodFather a Telugu remake of a Malayalam film of 2019. Drishyam 2 in Hindi remakes the Malayalam sequel of 2021, and the original Malayalam Drishyam of 2013 had already been remade in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi.

Actors crossed the languages too. Dulquer Salmaan, a Malayalam star, has four films in the guide in four languages: Hey! Sinamika in Tamil, Sita Ramam in Telugu, Salute in Malayalam and Chup in Hindi. Samuthirakani appears in three Tamil and two Telugu films. Fahadh Faasil moves from Malayankunju in Malayalam to Vikram in Tamil, Nagarjuna Akkineni from two Telugu films to Brahmāstra in Hindi, and Mrunal Thakur from Jersey in Hindi to Sita Ramam in Telugu.

A short list of these films is in Pan-India hits.

Festival weekends

Indian film releases follow the festival calendar, and the guide shows it clearly. The biggest stars aim for the long weekends of Pongal and Sankranti in January, Diwali in October or November, and Christmas, when families go to the cinema together.

Pongal and Sankranti 2023 produced the most crowded week of the guide: four star films in four days. Thunivu with Ajith Kumar opened on 10 January, Varisu with Vijay on 11 January, Veera Simha Reddy with Nandamuri Balakrishna on 12 January and Waltair Veerayya with Chiranjeevi on 13 January. A year earlier, Sankranti 2022 had brought Bangarraju on 14 January.

Diwali 2022 fell on 24 October, and the Friday before it, 21 October, brought Sardar and Prince in Tamil and Head Bush: Vol 1 in Kannada. A week earlier Doctor G opened in Hindi, and the Hollywood release of the season was Black Adam, dated 19 October.

Christmas 2022 was the busiest season of all. Dhamaka and 18 Pages in Telugu and Vedha in Kannada opened on 23 December, Babylon on 22 December, M3GAN and A Man Called Otto on 28 December, and Avatar: The Way of Water a little earlier, on 14 December. The Independence Day weekend of August 2022 was another peak: Laal Singh Chaddha and Nna Thaan Case Kodu on 11 August, Thallumaala and Ravi Bopanna on 12 August and Karthikeya 2 on 13 August.

The four January days are summed up in Festival weekends.

The release calendar

Month by month, the 150 films of the guide make a clear pattern. January 2022 is the quietest month, with five releases, four of them Malayalam, because the pandemic still closed many cinemas in the north and the big Tamil and Telugu films moved their dates. February brings twelve and March eleven; from April to November every month has between eight and thirteen; December 2022 tops the calendar with eighteen; and the first months of 2023 hold nine, seven and six, March counting only to the 20th.

The days of the week tell the same story as any Indian film calendar: Friday is release day. Eighty-five of the 150 films opened on a Friday, 39 on a Thursday and 21 on a Wednesday, usually because a holiday fell later in the week. Three opened on a Tuesday and two on a Saturday.

Some Fridays were crowded. On 2 December 2022 five films of the guide opened together: An Action Hero and Freddy in Hindi, DSP and Gatta Kusthi in Tamil and Saudi Vellakka in Malayalam. On 5 August 2022 four opened: Sita Ramam and Bimbisara in Telugu, Darlings in Hindi and Prey in English. On 11 February 2022 four more: Badhaai Do, Kadaisi Vivasayi, Love Mocktail 2 and Fourwalls. And on 11 November 2022 another four: Monica, O My Darling, Mukundan Unni Associates™, Yashoda and Dil Pasand, one each in Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada.

The same date often brought films from very different worlds. On 9 December 2022, The Whale opened beside the Tamil comedy Naai Sekar Returns and the Kannada thriller Dr. 56. On 23 September 2022, the horror film Smile shared the day with the Hindi thriller Chup and the Telugu romance Krishna Vrinda Vihari. On 15 July 2022, Gargi, Ela Veezha Poonchira and Petromax opened in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.

The month counts are listed in The release calendar.

Stars and directors of the period

Counting the first five names of each cast, the busiest actor of the guide is Dulquer Salmaan, with four films in four languages, and Darling Krishna, with four Kannada films. Samuthirakani, a director who also works as a character actor, appears in five films across Tamil and Telugu: Thunivu, Don, Vaathi, Sarkaru Vaari Paata and Bheemla Nayak.

A long list of stars has three films each. In Tamil: Vikram, Dhanush and Vijay Sethupathi. In Malayalam: Mammootty, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Soubin Shahir and Basil Joseph. In Telugu: Chiranjeevi. In Kannada: Shiva Rajkumar. In Hindi: Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn, John Abraham and Rakul Preet Singh. Aishwarya Lekshmi has three, two in Tamil and one in Malayalam, and Ramya Krishnan three, two in Telugu and one in Kannada.

The directors are more spread out. Only two directors have two films in the guide: H. Vinoth, with Valimai and Thunivu, both starring Ajith Kumar, and Jeethu Joseph, with 12th Man and Kooman in Malayalam. Several directors also act in their own films: R. Madhavan in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, Rishab Shetty in Kantara, Pradeep Ranganathan in Love Today, Darling Krishna in Love Mocktail 2, and Prithviraj Sukumaran in Bro Daddy.

The family names of Indian cinema run through the shelves too: Pranav Mohanlal in Hridayam beside his father's 12th Man, Dhruv Vikram in Mahaan beside his father Vikram, Naga Chaitanya with his father Nagarjuna in Bangarraju, and Ram Charan with his father Chiranjeevi in Acharya.

Ratings and votes

The guide shows TMDB ratings on every poster, and in this set more than in most, the rating has to be read with its vote count. The Indian films of the guide carry 8,193 votes between them, fewer than many single Hollywood films. A Kannada film with two or three votes can show a rating of 8.0 or 9.0, while a film voted on by thousands settles around 7.

That is why the guide's list of the best rated films keeps only films with twenty votes or more. Seventeen pass the line at 7.5: Kadaisi Vivasayi 8.6, Top Gun: Maverick 8.2, Drishyam 2 8.0, Sita Ramam 7.8, then at 7.7 The Whale, A Man Called Otto, RRR, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Mukundan Unni Associates™, Rocketry: The Nambi Effect and The Batman, then at 7.6 Prey, Vikram, 777 Charlie and Avatar: The Way of Water, and at 7.5 The Black Phone and Gangubai Kathiawadi.

Of those seventeen, nine are Indian: three Tamil, two Telugu, one Malayalam, one Kannada and two Hindi, and eight are English. By language, the average rating is highest in English, 7.17, then Malayalam 6.72, Hindi 6.65, Tamil 6.41, Kannada 5.83 and Telugu 5.61. The Telugu average is pulled down by several big star vehicles with low ratings, such as Acharya at 3.9, Liger at 4.0 and Dhamaka at 4.2.

A high vote count is a good sign that a film travelled. RRR has 1,730 votes, K.G.F: Chapter 2 has 235, Vikram 193 and Kantara 165: these are the Indian films that audiences outside their home states sought out in large numbers.

The full list is on Rated 7.5 or more; a short note on reading ratings is in Reading the ratings.

StreamBlasters in figures

The 150 films of the guide add up to 21,359 minutes of running time, about 356 hours. The average film runs 142 minutes and the median 143, close to two hours and a quarter. Four films run three hours or more: Avatar: The Way of Water at 192 minutes, Babylon at 189, RRR at 187 and Cobra at 183. The shortest are Prey at 100 minutes, M3GAN at 102 and The Black Phone at 103, all English, and Ela Veezha Poonchira at 104, the shortest Indian film.

By language, Tamil films are the longest on average, at 153 minutes, followed by Telugu at 147, Hindi at 143, Malayalam and Kannada at 139 and English at 132. The longest film of each language is Cobra in Tamil, RRR in Telugu, Hridayam in Malayalam at 172, Jersey in Hindi at 175, K.G.F: Chapter 2 in Kannada at 168 and Avatar in English. The shortest of each is Naane Varuvean in Tamil at 122, Saakini Daakini in Telugu at 115, Ela Veezha Poonchira in Malayalam, Attack in Hindi at 123, Dr. 56 in Kannada at 105 and Prey in English.

The guide carries 186,007 TMDB votes in all. The six most voted films are all English: Avatar: The Way of Water with 14,801, The Batman with 12,736, Top Gun: Maverick with 11,761, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with 11,007, Thor: Love and Thunder with 9,074 and Everything Everywhere All at Once with 8,559. The most voted Indian films are RRR with 1,730, Pathaan with 279, K.G.F: Chapter 2 with 235, and Attack and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar with 226 each.

Six films are rated 8.0 or more, and three of them rest on two or three votes each. Of the 150 films, 124 name India first among their production countries, 22 the United States, and one each Japan, Sweden, Estonia and Georgia.

All the figures in one place: StreamBlasters in figures.

The look of StreamBlasters

The look of the guide is measured from the StreamBlasters home page archived on 20 March 2023. The site ran on DooPlay, a WordPress theme made for film catalogues, with its Fusion colour scheme and a few custom colours set in the page itself. The header was a solid black bar, #000000, with the menu links in white that turned blue, #408BEA, under the mouse; the same blue marked every link of the page.

Below the header, the page was white and 1,210 pixels wide. Each block of posters had a heading in dark slate, #222D34, with a 3-pixel blue bar on its left and a blue See all button on the right. Posters sat on a pale grey ground, #ECEFF5, with a red quality badge, #CD2026, and a green badge, #00BE08, for featured titles. Captions were in #222D34 with grey details, #757A7D, and the font was Roboto.

The guide keeps that black bar, the white blocks with their blue-marked headings and See all buttons, the grey poster ground, and the red badge, which here carries the language and the release date of each film, the two facts the StreamBlasters cards showed under every poster. The rating sits in a dark corner badge and the source label in green.

The measured colours are listed in The look of StreamBlasters; for searching see Search tips, and for the button The Watch now button.

How to use StreamBlasters

The home page opens with a short introduction and a board of the twelve windows, each with its film count. Every window then has its own row of posters, newest first, with a See all button that opens the full shelf. The menu at the top leads to the six language pages, each with both windows together.

The search box finds a film from a few letters of its title. Every film page has the English synopsis, the cast and director, the running time and the release date, and a heart button that saves the film to My list, which stays in your browser. The Watch now button opens the film on JustWatch, where you can pick your country and see the services that offer it to stream, rent or buy.

Questions